1 Sitio(s) de ejecución
Maria M., born in 1928: “One day, Germans in green uniforms accompanied by policemen started to round up the Jews. Under the pretext of searching for workers, they passed from one Jewish house to another to take those fit to work and send them to Dunayivtsi. Of course, once there they were killed, but officially they were taken there to work.
About noon that same day the Germans came back. This time they requisitioned about a dozen carts to transport the remaining Jews. The Jews didn’t suspect anything. They took some belongings with them and got onto the carts in groups of four or five, without counting the children, because there were many children among them. I saw the column being escorted by policemen from the field where I was working with other women.” (Witness n°2822U, interviewed in Shatava, on October 19, 2020)
There are lists of victims. According to them 324 Jews were killed in Shatava by German invaders between 1942 and 1943. [GARF 7021-64-80., pp. 66-71]
Shatava is located 14 km (9mi) northwest of Kamianets-Podilskyi.The first Jewish settlers to arrived in the town in the 16th century. In 1765, 164 Jews lived in Shatava. By 1897, 35% of the total population was Jewish. In 1926, the number of Jews living in the town dropped to 434, making up only 20% of the total population. Many Jews lived off small scale trade and handicraft. In the 1930s, a Jewish kolkhoz [collective farm] was created, and the craftsmen started to work in the cooperatives owned by state. The community had a prayer house, a cemetery and a Jewish primary school.
Shatava was occupied by German forces on July 10, 1941. There is little information on the Holocaust in the village in the available historical sources. According to the archives, about 324 Jews from Shatava and the nearby village of Makiv were shot outside the village in a sand quarry between 1942-1943 by a unit of Einsatzgruppe C. Some Roma people were shot alongside the Jews during the execution. The remaining Jews were transferred to the ghettos of Dunayivtsi and Kaminets-Podilsky. With the help of the local eyewitnesses interviewed by Yahad, we were able to ascertain that shortly after the occupation, several anti-Jewish measures were taken. Even though the Jews continued to live in their homes, they were registered and marked with distinguished badges and their circulation was limited. According to witnesses, the execution took place in the summer if 1942, either in June or late August according to different witnesses. The majority of victims killed in Shatava were women, children and elderly people. The shooting was conducted by Germans, although local Ukrainian and Polish policemen took an active part in round-up and guarding, with some of them even participating in the shooting itself, according to the witness n°2821U. Before being shot in small groups, the victims were forced to undress. Some children weren’t shot but thrown into the pit alive. The killing site was guarded for three days after the execution to prevent anyone from getting out of the pit and escaping.
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